On September 4,
2007 the Chula Vista City Council and the Chula Vista Redevelopment Corporation
(CVRC) met at 6 PM in the Police Community Room at F Street in Chula Vista. We
(Derrick Dudley and I) attended and video taped the meeting. (The entire
meeting is available on 3 DVDs to anyone who requests it from us.) Most of the
community members who spoke at this meeting were concerned that this plan to
give decision-making authority to an appointed board is an attempt to shield
the council from the political ramifications of unpopular decisions. The city
manager and the mayor kept emphasizing that the proposed changes were minor: (http://www.chulavistaca.gov/City_Services/Development_Services/Community_Development/PDFs/9-4-07JointCVRC-CCAgendaItem2.pdf).

Council member
Castaneda gave the matter the proper perspective when he pointed out that the
current authority that the CVRC has was only granted because at that time all 5
of the elected council members were members of the board and the bylaws made
sure a majority of them had to concur with any decisionsHe made the point that not only are the
new powers being proposed questionable, but since the council has removed
themselves from the board the existing powers should also be a matter of
concern.

Councilman Rudy
Ramirez had City Manager Garcia discuss why redevelopment does not work in
Chula Vista and the issue of lack of trust.Councilman Ramirez felt the problem was
top down management and lack of trust. Our city manager felt lack of success
was the reason for the lack of trust.

During the meeting a
great deal of discussion dealt with who should approve tentative maps. The city
manager and others tried to insist this was no big deal because the council
would approve the final maps. City Attorney Ann Moore made it clear that by law if the
developer completely fulfilled all of the conditions on the tentative map,
approval of the final map was a ministerial function and if the council did not
vote to approve a judge would force them to do so.

Councilman Ramirez
noticed in the staff report a reference to creating greater autonomy for the
CVRC .
Eric
Crockett (Redevelopment Manager since 2004) responded in a manner that
indicated the goal was eliminating duplication of effort by the council and the
CVRC- essentially making them more autonomous from the council. The city
manager took objection to Mr. Crockett’s nodding his head to Councilman
Ramirez’s conclusions and tried to explain away the word as an attempt to make
the staff of redevelopment autonomous from the city.

Those of us who feel the staff is already
not adequately responsive to the public are a bit concerned about redevelopment
staff becoming “at will employees” (no longer having civil service protection).
Their jobs will depend upon producing results.One wonders how the health, safety, and quality of life of existing
residents will fit into this new equation or ethics for that matter?

Chris Lewis who is the chairperson made
clear what their intention is .
He
stated several times that he wanted their hands untied. They wanted to see
projects in the ground. This any development as quickly as possible attitude is
quiet troubling.

City Manager David Garcia’s references to
the condition of Chula Vista’s “inner city neighborhoods” was as insulting as it was inaccurate.
Chula Vista is essentially a bedroom community. The expanses of Orange County
style housing developments in the east obviously fit this picture, but the
western part of the city started from agricultural roots and as those farms and
orchards were subdivided they were replaced with homes-most of which are kept
up by their owners. There are more renters in the west than in the east, but
just because homes and apartment buildings are older than 20 years old does not
make them “inner city neighborhoods.” We do not now have “inner city
neighborhoods.” We have neighborhoods of suburban style homes with apartment
buildings and mobile home parks interspersed to provide a variety of housing
options. Some of the ideas expressed in the “flawed” Urban Core Specific Plan and the newly
(12/05) amended General Plan would produce dense inner city neighborhoods, but
these do not exist in Chula Vista now, nor do most of the negative problems
associated with them.

There IS a $369 million dollar
infrastructure deficit in streets, pavement and drainage but deferred
maintenance, questionable planning decisions, and annexing of the Montgomery
neighborhood without adequate resources for improving deficits in
infrastructure are the main causes. All
of the deficits are not in the west and the building, which occurred in the
east, exasperates several of the drainage problems in the west. There are some
significant drainage problems in the east caused by allowing developers to fill
in canyons and align=left hspace=12 v:shapes="_x0000_s1037">pave excessive
amounts of surface area without making sure the storm water flows did not
increase substantially. When it rains now there is significant “stream
scouring” (the
erosion of the sides of streams and canyons) caused by storm “surges”
(large fast run-off from paved surfaces) entering several natural canyons in the
east. Two of these canyons drain into the west causing problems (Telegraph
Canyon, Palm Road). One (Long Canyon) drains into The Hill Road Canyon
surrounded by homes in the county.

One problem with this contention is that There is also the
problem that there is no development traffic fee imposed in the west and the park
acquisition fee is half what it is in the east (while there are .9 acre of
park per 1,000 in the west and 3.5 acre in the east). Therefore these projects will not even
contribute needed funds for their own impacts much less improve existing
deficits. State law requires a nexus before a development fee can be charged.
Considering most of the infrastructure problems are in residential
neighborhoods and most of the redevelopment areas are in commercial areas in
the northwest. It is doubtful this nexus can be found.

There is also the problem that 53% of all
tax increment (after pass throughs to schools and low income housing) goes to
service the debt of the redevelopment agency and 34.9% goes toward
administration (mostly salaries) according to budget
for 2007-2008. This does not even leave money to promote redevelopment,
which is what it is supposed to be spent for, much less to improve
infrastructure.